Keith J. White

The Child in American Evangelicalism and the Problem of Affluence

Theology

“David Sims has offered us not only a neologism, "Affluent American-Evangelical Child" (Afflamec?), but also a strident analysis of how this product of the 1950s has been prepared by the age of twenty as a lamb to be slaughtered on the idol of the "spirit of democratic capitalism." With careful analysis of the works of Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, and Lawrence Richards, contemporary sociologists, and key biblical passages and themes, the author concludes that an idolatrous theology has emerged. It is strong on individual liberty as a way of life, and very weak on repentance, the Cross, and the call of Christ to obedience through costly discipleship. It is a timely prophetic wake-up in the tradition of Bonhoeffer and Barth.”

The Quiet

Arts & Literature

“You may not arrive at the words, sounds, and silences of this unique testimony by the same daunting path as Jonathan Wilson. But my guess is that, like the Psalms, one of the poems has your name written on it. Strangely, I did travel by a route remarkably like that of the author: mine is the poem ‘Complete.’ Yours is waiting for you.”